Quarter 1 Units:

7th Grade:

7th graders are helping to pilot an English Language Arts curriculum that is new to TES: Wit & Wisdom. The philosophy behind the curriculum is to increase students' volume of reading while exposing them to a depth of knowledge in important topics that build background knowledge. The topic this quarter is the Middle Ages. Students will read three novels, as well as leveled supplementary texts, and work up to developing their own historical narrative based on their new knowledge.

8th Grade:

The cross curricular theme for 8th grade is Perspectives. In ELA, students are delving into the historical and scientific perspectives of one of the great discoveries of the turn of the 20th century: the isolation of radium. From the early "radium craze," in which companies introduced radium as a new miracle for improving health, to the lawsuit filed by the Radium Girls, through the atomic bomb, and into the use of nuclear power as an alternative energy source, students will read and analyze a variety of texts on the subject and finish the quarter with their own perspective-based historical narrative about one of these aspects of the history of radiation and radium.

Quarter 2 Units:

7th Grade:

7th graders are studying marginalized groups in the United States and the impact of World War II on those groups. Students are reading a novel about the Navajo code talkers, a group of soldiers who helped the United States during the war in the Pacific by using their unique and challenging language to send code across enemy lines. Students will also read a memoir of a young girl who began her life as an ordinary American, but was soon sent to an internment camp during World War II due to her family's Japanese heritage. Students will also produce an informational research paper.

8th Grade:

Students are working on a cross-curricular unit with Social Studies about Black history and racial justice. Students have learned about the history of slavery and racism and how it defines the United States today. Students have also researched and analyzed cases of environmental racism and injustice in the United States, in North Carolina, and in Orange and Alamance counties specifically. The goal of the project is each class will produce a series of recommendations for local governments to prevent and solve instances of environmental racism in our community and beyond.

Quarters 3 and 4 Units:

7th Grade:

7th graders are studying the power of language: Is it more impactful to use language to uplift or to control? To find out, students will be studying texts from a myriad genres, including contemporary and classical poetry, artifacts from the American Civil Rights Movement, propaganda and speeches from the rise and fall of communism, and study the Orwell novel, Animal Farm. In the end, students will be able to compare the language and literary elements of historical movements and evaluate their impact.

8th Grade:

What is love? 8th graders are studying Shakespeare's comedies, combined with scientific, philosophic, and artistic works from throughout history to define, interpret, and evaluate the impact of romantic love as an integral part of the human experience in many forms and functions.